Child Labour (Labor)
2021: EU Imports Associated with Child Labour
What is the value of EU imports associated with child labour? And what are the policy options -- leveraging Europe's collective purchasing power -- to constructively engage exporting countries on this issue? These were the key questions that MEP Saskia Bricmont and economist Olivier Derruine of The Greens/EFA Group entrusted us to answer.
The novelty of this study is that we used Basu's child labour model to build an economic case for responsible intervention on child labour, and further operationalised Basu's model to designate zone-specific interventions based on the particular socio-economic development of the country. In order to gauge the value of the EU’s exposure to imported goods produced with child labour -- a value not previously estimated -- we developed an ex-novo method that combined US lists of products associated with child labour + EU trade database + new ILO child labour added value figures per region. Here our study and here the companion app.
2019: WFCL in the DRC:
Cobalt Refiner Due Diligence Reporting
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been called the Saudi Arabia of the electric vehicle age, home to the majority of the world's cobalt reserves. Yet need we usher in the e-mobility revolution, and with it the low carbon era, at the expense of human rights? Our report picks up where Amnesty's "THIS IS WHAT WE DIE FOR" left off, and a few years later asks what Cobalt refiners are doing in the way of child labour due diligence in accordance with the OECD and CCCMC guidance.
2006-2015: WFCL in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire
DI researchers have worked on the issue of the Worst Forms of Child Labor (WFCL) notably since October 2006, when the Payson Center for International Development at Tulane University was awarded the USDOL-funded "Oversight of Public and Private Initiatives to Eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labor in the Cocoa Sector in Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana" project to evaluate corporate compliance with the Harkin-Engel Protocol.
By undertaking population-based surveys and assessing intervention outcomes, our findings reveal the extent to which progress is made towards the elimination of the WFCL and FAL in the cocoa sector of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana (described in great detail in annual reports made to U.S. Congress).
As a part of this work, DI team members also carried out a snowball survey in Burkina Faso and Mali in 2009 to address the issue of migration and trafficking of children to the cocoa sector (see 4th Annual Report).
Among the multitude of interventions to address the worst forms of child labor, one of the responses to the practice has been the institution of child labor monitoring (CLM). Chris Bayer's dissertation provides an empirical view of how it was possible for a cocoa-producing community in Ghana, employing a child labor monitoring system, to address the entrenched practice of child labor and WFCL.